Over the last couple of years, Facebook has pivoted into the role of “Fox News 2.0” with an audible click. If anything, the problem is that people haven’t yet ceded it to the right; their mortal souls are in as much peril as if they were getting their TV news from Fox.
What makes me feel slight panic is that we persist in talking about Facebook this way – “ceding” implies it’s a common territory, with its own reality independent of Facebook the business. But that was never the case, any more than Metallica belongs to the people who wave lighters at their gigs. Facebook and Twitter and YouTube are things you consume, and if we learn to understand them that way then we won’t have to keep being poisoned by them.
“Hell”, in this case, being that alt-right parallel world from which we’ve just received a visitor.
There’s not much to be gained by debating a commenter who introduces himself with a bunch of category errors, any more than there is doing so with a flat-earther or an anti-vaxxer. My recommendation would be to let the comment stand as a reminder that at least 27% of the electorate has this profound lack of critical thinking skills and this profound level of ignorance and that they will none-the-less be voting in November.
I think you’re half right, in that mainstream outlets are wilfully disconnected from the thoughts of the populace, and the internet has suddenly let everyone see just how true that is, and it’s a serious problem that they’re not even beginning to try to acknowledge that.
That is, it’s a problem that everyone can now see their subtle bad-faith biases, and the fact that they harbor overpromoted dipshits like Brett Stephens who aren’t qualified to explain anything to anyone, yet their collective attitude is “we’ll just gaslight our way past these issues, because it’s 1982 and the public can only see the world we choose to show them”. Of course people are going to get pissed off and tune out.
But if / when () the news media learns higher standards and more self-awareness, they will still think differently to the mass of the people, because that is the whole entire point. We don’t need news to reflect our reptile hindbrain reactions back at us; we need it to reveal new information and synthesize new perspectives. That’s why it’s called “news”.
Regardless, the idea that the saliva golem Ben Shapiro is a reasonable alternative is like thinking, because your math teacher smells of booze, you should therefore learn math from the kid at the back who can’t stop jamming erasers up their butt. It’s beneath debate.
So I’m not going to argue this point on specifics. I’ll just say: when you feed Shapiro and Alex Jones and Turmp your attention, do you really think that is worthy of your dignity? If you enjoy getting your buttons pushed, fine; but do you think this is the best intellectual nourishment you deserve? Do you think you can’t be better or smarter than Ben Shapiro?
While making FB a public utility might not currently be a legal option (I tend to lean toward anti-trust measures as a government-driven solution), the fact is that right-wingers already control it, with or without (but, as it stands, very much with) Zuckerberg’s connivance.
Failing a government solution and not expecting corporate advertisers to do the right thing, leaving FB en masse is the only way for “the products” to exert pressure. We can debate the balance sheet between genuine utility (non-political social interactions) and the damage the platform is doing to liberal democracy and society, but in the end the latter is too evident and too widespread to dismiss. A person of good conscience cannot participate in such a system.
Alt-right garbage certainly appears in the comments on LinkedIn, but most LinkedIn users don’t come there to discuss politics in the way FB users tend to do. If LinkedIn got hijacked by these nuts in the same way FB got taken over, the platform would quickly cease to be useful for its primary purposes of business networking and job-seeking.
That would be a problem for LinkedIn’s shareholders, who have more voting power than FB ones do. They could easily over-ride any possible misguided decisions of the founder to let this nonsense run wild in the way Zuckerberg or Dorsey do (not that I think Hoffman would – while he’s made mistakes, in general he seems to be an establishment capitalist who thinks there’s more business value in preserving liberal democracy than allowing it to be destroyed).
Right around to Stalinism, or so some would say? It’s not like people who are weaponizing these terms actually understand what they mean. They just use terms like “leftist”, “socialist”, “liberal”, “Marxist”, and “antifa” interchangeably to mean BAD. They don’t actual understand them.
I feel I should have showed a sampling with my earlier comment. I took about 50-60 screen caps before I gave up in despair. This was in January 2019.
I’d share but I’m also paranoid about being identifiable from any clinging metadata poo that may link me to these screen caps.
They devolved quickly into horrible Nazi imagery and comments including a large Totenkopf. The number of likes and comments from actual LinkedIn users was disheartening (many had “Retired” listed as their employer).
Anyway… the whole sorry mess was there for almost a full day and grew exponentially until LinkedIn yanked it down.
I’ll take your word for it. I’ve seen instances of alt-right douchebaggery, too, although not as awful as what you’re describing. The fact remains that LinkedIn did wipe what you saw within 24 hours (still too long in my opinion) whereas Facebook and Twitter leave that sort of thing up (sometimes indefinitely). I don’t think LinkedIn does that out of any sort of civic virtue, but rather because it’s bad for its business. They’re not operating on the same “anything goes” engagement model that FB does.
Yeah, that tracks. Really, unless a retired person is an accredited investor there’s no real reason for him to be an active user on LinkedIn except to sh*tpost.
There are ways to remove that. Google “exif scrubber” and you’ll find ways to clean up the screen caps. Still, I don’t think you owe us any evidence.
Ah yes, leftist outlets like the Grey Lady, whose feckless capitulation to conservative talking points makes the milquetoast centrism of Democrats seem downright progressive.
I am reminded of a run-in I had today with a fellow American over here in Munich. Seemed a nice enough fellow, older gent, who has been stranded here due to COVID and all flights being cancelled. Came over here for some sort of cancer treatment. That if he was lucky he might get a flight in October, if it isn’t cancelled again.
And then he started telling me proudly about how Trump was leading in the polls, how Trump was going to going to win by a landslide, how he couldn’t understand his Jewish neighbours no longer talking to him especially since Trump has done so much more for Israel, how corrupt Hillary was selling uranium to Iran and putting the money in a trust fund for Chelsea, and worse. Much worse. I ended up calling him a liar to his face, who should be ashamed of himself.
Until now, I didn’t realise people like this actually existed. Amazing to find an example who has been out of the USA for so long, and still stuck in the feverish parallel universe. But it makes sense, that his news would now be from such sources as Facebook.
ETA: on a more serious note, regarding your suggestions about Comcast, it’s not always that easy. They sue towns that try to come up with their own solutions. And they win. It’s mind boggling.
FWIW… In another election year, far far away, I used to watch Morton Downey, Jr. The only thing it did for me was make me mad – at him, not at whatever he was ranting about. I certainly wasn’t better off and not really edified. Just that many fewer minutes I could have been doing something better with my life, like woodshedding.
Yes. And it can lead to real, material harm, up to and including death for some of us. Being able to ignore Trump and others is a privilege not all Americans have.
It’s important to note that right now, these are the people who are running the executive branch and not too few state legislatures. This sort of propaganda can very much lead to violence. It already has in this case. Ignoring it’s long build up has not help avert what’s happening right now, which is a right wing take over of our country.
) the news media learns higher standards and more self-awareness, they will still think differently to the mass of the people, because that is the whole entire point. We don’t need news to reflect our reptile hindbrain reactions back at us; we need it to reveal new information and synthesize new perspectives. That’s why it’s called “news”.
It’s not like people who are weaponizing these terms actually understand what they mean. They just use terms like “leftist”, “socialist”, “liberal”, “Marxist”, and “antifa” interchangeably to mean BAD. They don’t actual understand them.
